Can a Maine Coon cat with calico markings be born in the same litter that has a DSH (domestic short hair) also with calico markings ? I have inherited two cats, one clearly a MC and the other a DSH, both calico colors. They are supposedly sisters, neutered. I do not know anything about the other litter mates (if any) nor anything about the parents.
Thanks for opinions/facts.
Yes, cats can have litters with multiple fathers. They can mate multiple times while they are in heat. So you have cats with the same mother and different fathers.
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I’d be glad to but I see no way to link a picture here. . .
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Calicos are almost always female; male calicos have the feline version of Klinefelter’s Syndrome in that they have an XXY configuration, and are almost always infertile.
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Post the links, there’s no direct image posting here.
Well, DSH isn’t really a breed. It’s just regular mongrel cats. Maine Coon, though, is a recognized breed. So if you know your cats share at least one parent, you have two mongrel cats. Is your “Maine Coon” really a domestic long hair? DSH and DLH frequently occur in the same litter.
I’ve heard cats informally referred to as Maine Coon types, meaning that they don’t have the official papers or a known family tree but still fit many of the criteria of the breed–large-bodied, long and heavy coat (the fluffy tail being especially important), ear tufts, laid-back personality, and so on. My sister had one (may he rest in peace, this world was not good enough, etc.). During the same time period I had a random breed long-haired cat (uh, sometimes it’s not only the good who die young), basically a DLH, and while it’s sort of splitting hairs to describe the difference, they were two different types of cat. My cat, while she was on the largish side for a female was more chubby than large-bodied, and while her tail was fluffy it wasn’t the out-of-control floof that you see in a Maine Coonish type. And my cat was not laid-back. She needed her own liability insurance. Anyway, clearly you have been blessed.
My large cat has every reported characteristic of the Maine Coon breed, including affectionate personality. The other is clearly a short hair, common acting/looking cat.
I don’t understand how they could have come from the same litter.
Well if a Maine Coon mates with a shorthair, each offspring could inherit more traits from one parent than the other. There is no reason to expect all of the kittens to be some kind of perfectly blended mix.
Among humans, fraternal twins don’t need to look alike … different eggs and different sperm can indeed give different looking babies … the OP says they know nothing of the parents so it could be a case of a Maine Coon mama and a DSH papa … we don’t even need the mechanic of two different papas to get a mixed litter.
Mom could have been a DSH; she mates w/ both MC and non-MC males. The egg released when she mated w/ the MC became the cat w/ MC characteristics and the egg released when she mated w/ the non-MC became cat w/ DSH characteristics.
Feline estrus is very different from human estrus.
Anecdotally, we had brothers from a litter comprised of two DLH and one DSH; all three have tuxedo markings so it’s assumed the mother did as well (no one I know saw her). Whether she was a DSH or LSH is up for grabs.
Ok. . I was clearly dense on this and didn’t understand. All these comments and explanations broke through the fog and I got it now. . 
Thanks much to all -
I had no idea. I guess that explains how one of my reverse-tuxedo boys has a tabby sister.
If you have a DSH with some Maine Coon ancestry that isn’t expressed, the genes can express in an offspring, so if your DSH with MC ancestry mates with a MC, it can have a kitten that looks to all intents and purposes pure MC. It isn’t, but it can certainly look that way.
I had a dog that looked a full Pit Bull that was actually 3/4 PB. I just went ahead and called her a Pit Bull, but she had Australian Cattle Dog that was completely undetectable.
There was a much publicized case of parents who had twins of “different races.” That wasn’t really the case, of course. Both parents were biracial, and one twin inherited mostly “pink/absent” pigment genes, while one inherited mostly “brown” pigment genes, because the parents carried the potential for all types. If you looked at the girls’ faces, they had pretty much the same features. Basically, you could simply have one cat who got the MC genes and one who did not, and then, if they have different fathers, that would further explain why they look very different.
Not necessarily - all you need is a black parent and a tabby parent, one and only one of them with white patches. Pattern can come from either parent and the dominant form of the Agouti gene that creates the tabby pattern generally overrides solid black. So sister could have got the dominant Agouti pattern from dad, while her brother got the recessive non-Agouti pattern from mom. Sister would be a tabby like dad, brother would be black like mom.
I think either parent in this scenario could have been bi-colored, but again only one of them. The piebald white gene is dominant to almost everything, overlaying virtually all colors/patterns ( except dominant white oddly enough ), so if it is there it never skips generations. Brother got the dominant version in either a heterozygous ( Ss - relatively less white spotting ) or homozygous ( SS - relatively more white spotting ) and sister got a double recessive ( ss - no spotting ).
Or, y’know, there could also have been two dads :D. Cat colors are complicated.
“I guess we won’t know for sure until after the autopsies” – Dr. Simon August
This explains why the DSH tuxedo brother we have has tabby stripes shaded in his black fur that can be seen in very bright sunlight - they’re as subtle as the stripes on a Russian Blue’s tail.
Take any two variants of the same species (breeds of cats, “races” of humans, whatever), call them A and B. Take any four individuals, two each of those variants, in male-female A-B pairs (it doesn’t matter which variant is which gender). Now produce offspring from each of those pairs, producing two mixed-variant young. Assume that those two second-generation individuals are a male-female pair, and now cross them.
The young of that pair of mixed individuals, the third generation, can now exhibit any combination of traits, from either of the original variants. They can look exactly like variant A, or exactly like variant B. They can look mostly like one, but with a few traits of the other, or like an even mix of traits from both. And this happens independently for every individual of that third generation.
So it’s quite possible for a single litter of kittens, even all with the same father, to include some that look like Maine Coons, and some that look like conventional domestic shorthairs.